>> jon: that's our show. join us next week at 11:00. here it, is your moment of zen. >> this is the last time that there's ever going to be harry potter film premier. it's like the end of an era. >> oh, my gosh, i'm so >> stephen: tonight, will a scandal bring down rupert murdoch? no. then a new threat from gitmo detainees. if they get any more dangerous, we might have to charge them with something. and my guest is jose antonio vargas, who recently admitted

being an illegal immigrant. my original guest was the american whose job he stole. who has two thumbs and is incredibly bad at gesturing at himself? this is "the colbert report." captioning sponsored by comedy central [theme song playing] [cheering and applause] >> stephen: thank you for joining us, everybody. [audience chanting "stephen"] oh, that's nice.

thank you for joining us. you know, once these people... once these people start chanting my name, you can't stop them. [laughter] folks, i want to say hello to everybody watching in america, especially to our viewers in italy. welcome. [cheering and applause] buenos aires. folks, tonight america sits helplessly by while we inch closer to a catastrophe. and i'm not talking about the debt ceiling. someone will do something about that. i'm talking about the hell storm about to hit los angeles, the likes of which no living human has ever seen. now, i want to warn my viewers that what i'm about to say is so horrifying that if there are any best feeding mother's watching, your milk may curdle in the eat the. ready? brace yourself. this weekend in los angeles, a

short stretch of the 405 freeway will be closed for repair. [audience reacts] is everyone okay? we prayed this day would never come. luckily the media have been a voice of calm. >> the most traveled highway in america, the most, the 405 in l.a., is about to shut down for an entire weekend. >> they're predicting gridlock on steroids. >> back-ups that could reach the mexican border. >> stay the hell away from the 405. >> they're calling it carmageddon. >> carmageddon is coming. >> carmageddon or the carpocapalypse. >> the carmen mirandeth. now sure, californians have

survived earthquake, drought, wildfire, laker victories, even alien invasions, but this is the big one, folks. increased traffic on two off-peak days. you know what that means, someone might have to walk someplace. [laughter] think of the children. pray for them. i certainly hope los angeles survives because i've got to be out in l.a. or the big angel, as they say, in just a couple months. i don't want to but it's business because this morning i got nominated for an emmy. [cheering and applause] yep. yes. this is what they look like in person. [audience chanting "stephen"]

yes. [cheering and applause] i see these people on the red carpet. now i've already got two for the show, so this could possibly lead to an emmy three-way. see. they're all girls. i checked. [laughter] now, "the report" is nominated for best directing, best writing and best late night show. unbelievably we were once again snubbed for outstanding achievement in prosthetic make-up. people just don't realize that under this i'm like admiral ackbar. [laughter] but for the first time, i was nominated twice in the same category, first for "the report," and then again for late night with jimmy fallon, since as you'll recall he used my trademark image on his emmy

screener sent out to the voters. now he is my best friend for six months, so, jimmy, good luck to you, by which i mean good luck to me. may the best stephen colbert win. nation, i don't usually pay attention to what's going on in england. i assume if something really important happens over, there i'll find out about it in the next harry potter movie, which strangely there has been no mention in the latest trailer of my favorite angelo-australian-american media billionaire muggle, news corp chairperson and five-time dark lord of the month rupert murdoch. he's facing a spot of legal trouble in merry old england town because a tabloid he owned, the "news of the world," well, they went and did a silly thing. they illegally hacked into people's cell phone messages. 4,000 times. and now poor uncle rupi is

getting his crumpet stopped and for what? >> rupert murdoch said "news of the world" tried to hack into the voice mails of victims of the 9/11 attacks. >> as well as the voice mails of families of british segars killed in action. >> the paper hacked into the voice mail of 13-year-old millie dowler while she was still missing and the hacker even deleted some voice mails, giving her family false hope she was still alive. >> stephen: anything else? >> victims included actress sienna miller and star hugh grant. >> stephen: oh, hugh grant. he hasn't had a movie in like two years. but just how big of a scandal is this? >> after 168 years now, the "news of the world" has put its last issue to bed. the tabloid was shut down this past week by its owner, rupert murdoch. >> stephen: so big that a

paper going out of business is news. [laughter] well, the media sharks are licking their chops, and not just because riewp ertd looks like a dead squid. [laughter] look at how gleefully the competition is reporting this story. >> the scandal deepens for rupert murdoch and his media empire rocked by shame. >> i'm not really hearing a response from news corp, and they're usually the most aggressive. you look at their p.r. staff, and they're remarkable. >> there is no containing the scandal. >> the scandal. >> rocked by scandal. >> anarchy in the u.k., as the sex pistols might have said. >> stephen: as cee lo green might say, "[bleeped] you." now, i warned rupert, these are the type of attacks that happen when there are media companies he doesn't own. now all the other media types are ganging up on him.

they're accusing murdoch's american news channel fox of not covering the story because during a commercial break fox news analysts said in front of a web cam that they weren't going to talk about it. >> anybody want to bring up the subject that we're not talking about today for the streamers? >> go ahead. >> i'm not going to touch it. >> stephen: big deal. that's fox news motto "we don't touch it. you decide." now, "news of the world," news of the world didn't even do anything wrong. just listen to its former editor paul mcmullen. >> i tried to write articles in a truthful way and what better source of getting the truth is to listen to someone's messages. >> stephen: yes. laughter laugh the same way that the best way for a doctor to get your medical history is to steal your kidney. [laughter] so following their example and to get to the truth of this story, i hacked the messages

left by rupert murdoch on his attorney's cell phone this week. jim. >> henry, this is rupert. this thing's gone out of control. i'm australian for [bleeped]. call me back as fast as a wallaby up a eucalyptus tree. henry, rupert. goddamnit i had to close the paper. i'm angrier than a blooming onion. when i'm angry i want to buy stuff. see if colorado is available. call me. bye. [beeping] [bleeped]ded. [bleeped] on the barbie. i want to buy hugh jackman and make him breed with kylie minogue. koala me back. [applause] >> stephen: crikey. it looks like his media empire might go down the toilet now, and in australia it goes down the other way.

[laughter] because yesterday murdoch had to abandoned his 12 billion dollar bid to buy british satellite broadcaster b sky b. we don't get b sky b here because the british satellites drive on the wrong side of the orbit. it is so sad, folks. with "news of the world" gone and b sky b out of reach, all rupert has to comfort him are these few media properties. [laughter] see, that's all. from now on... okay. all right. we'll be [cheering and applause]

>> stephen: welcome back, everybody. thank you very much. you're very, very generous. i can tell. folks, here in the united states of america, we're under constant threat from forces working to undermine our values. from the gay agenda to greek yogurt. yeah, i'm supposed to take some greek guy's word that it's full of good bacteria. don't trust them. i always stir in a spoonful of

purell first. and, of course, terrorists. just because you capture them doesn't mean you're safe from them. take gitmo. evidently the terrorists who they've been holding there have been busy behind the bars crafting a dangerous new weapon -- art. you see, evidently dozens of subversive works have been created by gitmo detainees from this terror sunset to this osama bin landscape. folks, these are dangerous i.e.d.s -- improvised expressive devices. we thought enhanced interrogation would give us information, but instead we turned gitmo into an artist colony full of literally tortured artists. [laughter] this, this is why we cannot have them in civilian courts. the courtroom sketch artists would be on their side and make them look good.

it would taint the jury pool, and then these guys would get off, and when they're back on the streets, they won't need bombs to blow up our buildings because with the stroke of a brush, they can shatter our aesthetic paradigm. consider this still life by one of the inmates, the melon, a severed completeness, an island identity isolated from the whole, proxied from the prisoner, removed from society, foreground of the production becomes amplification, hedge monic historical myth making cut by the non-scape of the white. this is canvas as theater of existential warfare, an insurgency of the voiceless subaltern. [cheering and applause] i ask you... i ask you, who is the prisoner now? [laughter] or this, that's a really good

boat. nation... good boat. surveying their oov, it now occurs to me, could all of gitmo be one giant art installation? take our enemies from the stone-age villages in afghanistan, fly them halfway across the world and drop them into an extra governmental space, neither american nor the battlefield. herein using unchecked executive power in an act of blistering self-critical texturalization, not to mention some of those guys look like they got wrapped up by cristo. so i say, forget marine abromovich, forget lori anderson, the greatest performance artists of our generation are these two guys. we'll be right back. [applause] [cheering and applause]

>> stephen: welcome back, everybody. my guest tonight is a pulitzer prize winning journalist who recently admitted he's an illegal immigrant, so i will pay him half of the nothing i pay my guests. please welcome jose antonio

vargas. [cheering and applause] hey. mr. vargas, thanks so much for coming on. all right, sir. you are a journalist, true? >> yes, yes, i am. >> stephen: san francisco chronicle, new yorker, washington post, part of the post's pulitzer prize winning tea party for coverage of the virginia tech massacre, and in june you wrote an essay for the "times" magazine entitled "my life as an undocumented immigrant." you're abillegal alien. >> new york i'm undocumented. >> stephen: you're what we in the american world called "an illegal." you're an illegal. i think i've broken the law just having you in my studio. [laughter] >> no, this is actually an important point. i don't want like a 12-year-old sitting in middle school somewhere in america thinking that he or she is illegal. human beings are...

>> stephen: the cops are coming from you, junior. put a chair in front of the doorknob because the federales are coming. you came from mexico, right? >> no, no, i'm from the philippines. >> >> stephen: that's warmer mexico. you get your sombrero, you paddle over here to take american jobs. >> no, sir. steep open the what happened? what's your story? >> basically my mom sent me to america when i was 12 to visit my grandparents. and it was... >> stephen: was that legal? >> i thought it was legal. i thought everything was fine. >> stephen: you thought. >> i thought. i was 12678 when i was 16, i went to the d.m.v. to get my driver's permit. when i showed her my green card. she flipped it around and said it's fake, don't come back here again. that's when i found out. as a lot of other undocumented kids find out. they don't find out. >> stephen: that's shocking. someone at the d.m.v. was nice to you. >> yes.

>> stephen: that's unheard of. [applause] >> to this day, curly hair, glasses. i do not know her name. to this day i wish i could give her a really, really big hug because, yeah, i owe kind of a lot to her. she was one of the first people in my life, the second one was my choir teacher, she was first adult i told at school because she wanted the choir to go japan for a tour. and i told her i couldn't go and she said, well, why not. i said i didn't have the passport. she said, i'll get you the right passport. when i told her i was undocumented, she said the next day, the class was going to go to hawaii instead of japan. >> stephen: wow. >> her name is mrs. denny. >> stephen: you ruined their trip. [laughter] you ruined a life-changing trip for those kids. >> i owe that class, to this day, they don't know why they had to go to hawaii instead of

japan, but mrs. denny, that was... she's been a part of it. i've been referring to it as... referring to her as part of my 21st century underground railroad. teachers, pastors. >> stephen: that's the problem. that's the problem. >> why is that a problem? >> stephen: listen to me, because she enabled a crime. okay. >> no. >> stephen: there are people out there who are enabling guys like you to stay in the united states. >> yes. >> stephen: skip the normal process. >> but as you know, even your president, george w. bush, he knew that the immigration system was broken in 2006 when he gave a prime time speech on. this so people like him have said that the system is broken. >> stephen: that's why we voted him out of office, sir. that's why we voted bush out of office. made a huge mistake, there. so why did you finally come out of the closet as an illegal alien. >> as an undocumented immigrant. >> stephen: whatever. by the way, you're also a gay man. >> yes, i am. >> stephen: which was harder

coming out of the closet, a gay man or as a border gay? that's what it's called. that's exactly the term. border gay. >> we live in a great country that doesn't deport gay people, so i'm very, very papi about that. i decided to come forward because i e-mail one of 11 million undocumented people in this country. i came out here tonight. in the span of two days; 0,000 people have pledged to talk about immigration in a different way. we came here to say that when we talk about undocumented immigrants, illegal immigration, we need to get the politics out of it and really talk about how broken the system is. you know it's broken. >> >> stephen: i don't know that it's broken. it's working for me because my job is to argue about it, and it seems to be working for me. >> there's been enough arguing going on. there's been enough arguing going on and not enough solutions. >> stephen: you have an organization called... >> define american dot com. >> stephen: what do you mean? what is the purpose of "define

american." that sounds aggressive, you're not american. you're going, define american. >> no, no, actually it's the exact opposite. it's the one that tells us, undocumented or not, i grew up here. i've been here since i was 12. i'm an american. i don't have the right kinds of papers. millions of people have been contributing, paying taxes to this country and who deserve to be part of this country. >> you're not an american citizen, but would you like to become a citizen of our nation? >> what would that entail? >> stephen: obviously i'd have to swear you in. >> okay. >> stephen: raise your right hand. now raise your left hand. now go turn yourself into the authorities. [applause] thank you so much. thank you. define american founder jose vargas. we'll be right back.